


Bitterly Cold For an Autumn Night (with podfic)

by SarahJaneS



Series: September Smut Challenge [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Gay Male Character, Gay Sex, Heavy Angst, M/M, Male Homosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 07:33:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4868474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahJaneS/pseuds/SarahJaneS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a part of the September Shut Challenge!<br/>Castiel wishes Dean could return to the person he once was before Sam changed into Lucifer. </p><p>You can also listen to me read this story in podcast form here:</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://sjcosplay.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-24T00_04_34-07_00"> HERE </a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitterly Cold For an Autumn Night (with podfic)

When Sam left, he promised he would be back in two days. When they saw him again, it was Lucifer in his place. 

Dean changed on that day. He grew cold. Angry at everything. His eyes devoid of life. 

Cas watched him erode into constant torment, pleading with silent stares for Dean to notice him. To let him in. 

He gave up believing they still shared the same bond as before. Instead, Cas followed Dean like a shadow, and saw the man he admired and loved turn into an empty walking vessel. 

He watched Dean just as he watched the seasons pass. Winter into summer, summer into autumn, and somehow in that time, Dean formed an army. It was just a small drabble of men and women looking to take back their land and beg for Lucifer's demise. They set up a base camp, and went about living through hard days where it was just a struggle to survive. 

Castiel staked claim to one of the homes in the shanty town they hunkered in. He never had a home of his own, although he had once thought about what it might be like to share one with Dean. 

His friend was barely a presence at all unless they were heading into a battle. Hiding in his own lowly shack, he set about to escape the light of every day. 

Cas had given up on even being Dean's shadow by then, but every time he left his home, his eyes drifted over to the dark shack with its darker inhabitant. He missed seeing Dean smile. 

On such a day, Castiel spent most of the sunlight hours taking stock of supplies and planning for an upcoming raid. They were desperately short of food, which always took them into the heart of places that were full of hostiles. In raids like this, someone usually didn't make it back alive, and with it only four days away, Castiel again risked that death being his own. He accepted that, but was determined to do whatever he could to make sure the death wasn't Dean's. 

When the plan was set, Cas made his way back to his small home to retreat from the cold of autumn dusk outside. He thought that autumn wouldn't be such a bad time of year to die. The cool air would keep the rot off his vessel until Dean could place him on a pyre. It was a sobering thought, but it was the end of the world after all. Death loomed on the horizon for all of them. 

Once inside his home, he felt weary climbing the stairs to his small second story bedroom. He wanted his bed. 

Most of the people in their group resorted to sin to make it through the nights. Sex, alcohol, drugs, but Cas relied upon his dreams. Dreams of green eyes and a slow easy smile. 

When he stepped through his bedroom doorway, Cas lifted his head and stopped cold. In the middle of his bedroom, stood Dean. 

They had barely talked in almost a year. 

Dean lifted a garment in his hand and, not realizing that Castiel was there, dipped his head low to draw on the scent of one of Cas's shirts. Cas gasped, and Dean jerked his head up to see him standing in the doorway. His eyes narrowed but the anger there wasn't new; in truth it never left. 

Castiel couldn't stand it. He wanted Dean. His Dean. The one who had a shy smile and a warm heart. Seeing him in this way, in this room, gave Cas hope to believe that somewhere under all the bitter pain he wore like a cloak, the Dean he loved still existed somehow. 

Cas gave little thought to what he was doing when he pulled the shirt over his head. The pants followed behind, kicked off along with his shoes, and after a moment's hesitation, he let his underwear slide down over his hips as well. Cas stepped forward, naked and flushed, as he watched Dean's eyes dance over him. His heart raced, hopeful and yearning to be touched, but there was no lust in Dean's eyes. No longing. He looked empty. Lost. 

"Please," Cas whispered, not yet wanting to believe the sinking feeling inside of him. He lifted his hand to beckon Dean towards him, and as though on a tether, he seemed to reel Dean in. Dean turned and stomped on heavy boots across the small expanse of the room. Cas's heart raced, his breath caught; a soft moan of relief formed in the back of his throat. But then Dean kept walking. Past where Castiel stood and out into the hall; his footsteps echoing down the narrow flight of stairs. 

Cas stared at the space where Dean once stood and covered his naked vessel with his arms. Dean had rejected him. Dean did not find him appealing. Dean barely even looked at him when he walked by. Bending over, Cas scooped up the clothes he discarded and counted an extra shirt among them. The one Dean had been holding. 

Something ripped open in Castiel after that night and where his eyes always drifted to Dean's little shack before, Cas refused to look at it. 

It didn't stop the pain though. The weight of the rejection sliced into him every waking moment of the following day until he was nothing but tatters and shards. 

The day after that, he didn't wait for the women to come to him, but instead he sought them out. As many as he could on such short notice. He gathered them around him, a flock of desperate sheep, and with them he harbored a cocktail of drugs and promises of sex. 

He wanted to forget. He wanted to submerge himself in sin and dispose of his heart for as long as he could. Forever, if it was possible. Perhaps it would be a blessing to die in two days. As long as Dean was safe he would accept that fate should it arise. The pain of life extinguished could not possibly compare to this never ending agony that clawed at him ceaselessly. 

He led the girls into his living area, far too disgusted with himself to share his bed. And then he took them. All of them. He fell deeper and deeper into a black cesspool of drugs and bourbon, as his body trusted and worked against nameless and faceless women who moaned out his name. It was just enough to take off the edge. 

He could not begin to fathom how Dean found out what was happening, but suddenly he was standing there, towering over their naked bodies like God casting Eve from Eden. 

Cas covered himself with his arms as best as he could, ashamed still that Dean did not want him, but Dean hardly acknowledged he was there. Instead he grabbed each girl, naked and half dazed from drugs and sleep, and tossed them out into the autumn cold. 

Cas should have objected. He had the right to iniquity if he wanted it after all, but all he could do was stare at Dean and try to decipher the myriad of emotions flashing across his face. And when Dean glanced at him, eyes cold and hurt, Cas suddenly felt unclean. He wanted to wash away everything that had happened that day. 

After Dean was done discarding the women from the room like pale fleshed rodents, he turned and glared at Castiel. 

Cas reached for a shirt, desperate to cover his body, but Dean ripped it out of his hands and pulled Cas to his feet. Dean shoved him and Cas fell against the wall; startled and gasping for breath. An instant later, Dean was on him. Pressing the full weight of his body into him. 

"Dean!" The name came out like a prayer and Cas leaned forward, offering a desperate kiss, but Dean pushed him back again with a hard shove to his shoulder. It hurt a little, vertebrae digging into the wall, but Cas was too high and disoriented to even register the anger in Dean's eyes. He just knew he wanted him. He wanted Dean so badly. 

Dean leaned in, lips drawn down in a scowl, and slid his hand from Cas's shoulder, to grip hard fingers against his jawline. Cas's eyes rolled and he groaned, his hips working against Dean's body. When his eyes fluttered open again, Dean mere inches away; hot breath caressing Cas's face. Cas opened his mouth to speak; desperate desire driving him through his drug filled haze to a horizon of confession. A testament of longing. 

"You're disgusting," Dean growled through clenched teeth, and then he stepped back. Cas stumbled forward, losing his footing, but by the time he was able to catch himself and lift his head, Dean was already gone. 

  


Castiel spent the next two day reliving the incident over and over in his mind. Dean pressed against him. Dean's breath on his skin. Dean's hand at his throat. Dean's words that stung deeper than all previous rejections combined. 

Cas barely left his bedroom. He consumed his days with hashish and cocaine. More and more he strived to drown out the pain, but he did not invite another woman into his home. 

The night before the raid, feeling the weight of danger in the morrow, Cas decided he needed to see Dean one last time. Perhaps it was the drugs making him stupid, or perhaps it was just answers he craved. But he found clothes to slip into, discarded on the floor alongside his heart, and drifted down his stairs. 

Castiel supposed it was still September. Hard to keep track when calendars mattered so little anymore, but it was bitterly cold for an early autumn night. It reminded him of Dean, and Cas took it as a sign. 

He had lost track of the time, the place, the space, the year. The drugs not only took away the pain, it dissolved everything in existence. 

When he stumbled into the chilly night, hugging arms against the thin cloth of his shirt, Cas knew it was late from how still the world had grown. Or perhaps everyone had already died while Cas was lost in a daze, leaving him alone and fallen in an infinite graveyard. The thought quickened his step. 

He had never dared tread inside Dean Winchester's home before, and yet it was not as hard as he anticipated. Just put one foot in front of the other, and let his convictions take care of the rest. 

Part of him expected to find Dean asleep. He could simply stand, admire the friend he once had, then slip back into the darkness undetected. But Dean was very much awake and Cas had to wonder if he even slept anymore. 

He found Dean, propped upright in his bed with a bottle of amber laid lazily cupped in his hand, and Cas's eyes lingered on it. 

It seemed like Dean had found his own methods to escape. 

"Why are you here?" Dean asked sharply but there was more hurt in his voice than anger. Cas stared at him. Transfixed and hypnotized to stand in the doorway unmoving. His eyes taking in every beautiful inch of the man he still loved. 

He didn't have an answer good enough to explain his presence. His fool brain had not processed past the moment of his arrival. But he didn't have to search too far too find the question haunting him for days. 

"Why?" He heard himself say, and watched Dean cringe. "Why don't you want me?" 

Dean's jaw worked against unspoken words. Eyes blank but intent on the swirl of his half full bottle. He looked exhausted and Cas's worry commingled with his fear. When at last Dean shrugged and opened his mouth to speak, it was with an unexpected softness Cas had not heard from him in years. 

"Because I'm angry at the world. Because I'm afraid to lose you. Because I'm in love with you." 

His eyes lifted then, and the brilliant green reflecting on the glow of the perimeter fires outside, caused Cas's head to spin. He staggered a little. 

He thought about running away from all this painful confusion. He thought about retreating back to the solitude of his barren home and sniffing more powder up his nose to forget why he had ever thought to come here in the first place, but those eyes turned him to stone. 

"Dean," Cas said softly and hated the desperate need threaded through his voice. Dean's eyes swept over him. Taking him in. Remolding him with the glare of his scrutiny. Then his lips parted and in an instant, he tore apart everything Castiel thought he knew about the gravity between them. Orbits circling but never colliding. 

"Take off your clothes." 

Cas stared at him, dumbfounded. What was he asking? What did he want? Should he dare hope that Dean had changed his mind, or was this just another way for him to hurt Cas all over again. 

Numb fingers trailed along the hem of Cas's tunic and he slowly pulled it over his head. His face burned, unsure of himself, but even now Cas could not deny Dean anything he requested. 

Tossing the shirt aside, he worked open his pants and pulled the rest of the garments from his skin. The room, not much warmer than the chill night beyond, left Cas shivering while he stood naked; arms concealing his indecency. 

Dean stared at him as he slid off his bed. Tossing his bottle to the side, he swayed just a little from the effects of his drink. Cas watched him warily as he closed the distance between them, and quickly realized how similar this was to what happened days before. If Dean walked past him again; if Dean rejected him as he did the last time Cas presented himself in this way, there would be nothing left for Castiel to put back together. He would simply melt into the floorboards and intermingle with the mice and the dust. 

Dean stopped just short of where Castiel stood shivering, and his eyes dancing over Cas's body; leaving behind tendrils of heat upon his skin. Cas tightened his arms, feeling the weight of Dean's gaze upon him, and turned to look away. 

"Don't do that," Dean said, low and gruff, and he reached out with gentle fingers to pull Cas's arms away from his body. Cas closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of Dean disliking what he saw. Cas wanted very much for Dean to appreciate his vessel because it felt like a part of him now. An ever present extension of his true body, and the only way he would ever be close to Dean without him going blind or burning to ashes. Cas swallowed nervously. 

"Dean... Do I... appeal to you?" Cas asked and Dean's immediate response came to him from within the cool darkness of his closed eyes. 

"You always have." Dean reached out with a moment of hesitation, then place his hand on Cas's shoulder. Cas turned back to him startled, and Dean leaned closer. As his fingers drifted down over Cas's chest, his eyes followed suit. 

This simple touch was all it took for Cas, and his face burned for the erection swelling in the small space between them. 

Dean dipped his head and studied Cas's length as his hand trailed lower. Cas could feel his fingers graze softly over his swollen head and he twitched reflexively into the touch. Cas trembled; the chill of the room intertwining with the burning heat of his stomach, and breathed in frigid swallows of air. 

Dean's lips parted, red and lush, and Cas stared at the way his tongue slid across to wet them. In the same instant, Dean's fingers grew bolder and circled the length of Cas's shaft; giving it a gentle pull. 

The air Cas heaved in, his chest rising from the effort, blew out of him in a shuddering moan. 

Dean watched him, eyes wide, and Cas could see just a spark of life within them. It gave him hope. He fell forward, thrusting into the firm grasp and tender lips of his righteous man. 

Dean opened to Cas, instantly responding to his frantic kiss, and the slow burn between them ignited into a blazing fire. Dean pulled at Cas, guiding him towards the bed while Cas tugged at any scrap of offensive clothing Dean still wore. 

Nothing was said between them; words and actions already leaving their damaging marks, but instead they spoke with hands and tongues and wanting bodies. A language much sweeter than any Cas has ever heard. 

Dean pushed Cas onto the bed and laid on top of him. Clothes cast aside, his dick fit perfectly into the joint of Cas's hip as Dean rolled his body in slow steady strokes. But it wasn't enough. 

They could die tomorrow. They could die any instant. It was the end of the world and Lucifer would relish in their unified demise. Cas couldn't wait anymore. He had to seize everything now because who knew what tomorrow would bring. 

He moaned his requests, body rutting with need, and Dean instantly complied. Rolling away from Cas, he got off of the bed and shuffled through dresser drawers until he was at last able to produce a small bottle of lubricant. 

It would take that and some effort to get Cas ready. It had never been something he had attempted before, but he knew how much he wanted this. The unity of physical connection, mending the rift of the mental one between them. 

When Dean finally thought it safe enough to commence without it hurting him, he straddled Cas over his hips, and eased himself inside. 

Cas stared down at Dean in wonder. His eyes stung with tears from both the rejoicing and the longing but it didn't matter anymore. The fire within him burned away every painful moment of their pasts. When Dean's hands closed around his hips, guiding Cas to move, the very fabric of existence burned away as well. 

Cas was lost. Tumbling through a tidal wave of sensation, and it was all so overwhelming, he didn't at first hear Dean's voice, chanting just above a whisper. 

"Please don't leave me. Please don't leave me. Please don't leave me." 

Cas pulled at Dean, clawed fingers on his back, and guided him to sit upright. He then shifted, adjusting his position, and wrapped arms around Dean as he bobbed slowly up and down once more. 

"I'll never leave you, Dean. Never. Not until the day I die." Cas worked kisses against the tears spilling from Dean's eyes, and he pulled Dean tight against his chest, quickening his pace. 

Dean's hands found his back as well and trembled as they trailed constellations into the skin. 

Cas could barely hear Dean whisper as he drove himself towards his release. Dean's voice calling out a mantra like a prayer. 

"Please don't die. Please don't die. Please don't die." 

But Cas let him be. It wasn't a promise he was able to make. Instead he leaned close and kissed along the edge of Dean's hairline; savoring the smell of him. 

Even if death might be poised to take them tomorrow wearing the mask of Sam's smile. Even if the world devoured them like it did everything in this god forsaken place, Cas would find a way. He would not leave Dean alone. Whether they lived or died, loved or hated, they would always find a way to still cling to each other. 


End file.
